Antivirus service for Google Apps is ineffective

Device users running Android apps that are wary of potentially dangerous should continue to use antivirus and malware detection software in addition to the service launched by Google to ensure the safety of the devices, according to an American professor.

Xuxian Jiang, professor of computer science at NC State University, tested the service of Google App Verification on a tablet Nexus 10 against 1260 Android malware known, and discovered that this service could identify and prevent the installation 193 apps infected, which represents a detection rate of 15.32%. The verification service apps was launched by Google on November 15, and is available in Jellybean 4.2, the latest version of the Android operating system. It aims to meet the increasing risk of malicious apps arriving in Google Play and the lack of truly effective anti-virus integrated into Android.  

To validate the results and put them in context, Professor Jiang Xuxian also compared the results of the Google service to other anti-virus. During this test, the Google service could identify 20.41% of threats, while other anti-virus showed detection rates between 51% and 100%.

   Jiang Xuxian note, "By introducing this new verification service apps on Android 4.2, Google shows its commitment to continuously improve safety on Android. however, according to our evaluation results, we believe that this service is still young and it can be improved. "